Donald Trump could become the first openly asshole President
"Donald Trump could become the first openly asshole President"
Not so. LBJ was a much bigger asshole than Donald Trump, and was also uncloseted.
I'd also dispute John Stewart's contention that Andrew Jackson was not an asshole. Yes, he was a violent, brutal, foul-tempered, uncouth racist, but I can't see how that could disqualify him from being an asshole. If anything, it would buttress his credentials. I believe this ad, placed by Jackson, says it all. He offered a fifty dollar reward for the return of a runaway slave, but raised the reward to sixty bucks if the claimant whipped the slave 100 times before returning him. The reward escalated to seventy bucks for 200 lashes, and eighty bucks for 300 lashes.
He was such a vile human being that the Confederate States of America used his picture on their very first currency, issued April 5, 1861, because he was truly their kind of guy! (The other dude seen there is John C Calhoun, who was as bad a human being as Jackson, and served as Jackson's VP, although they ended up hating each other. That's not really surprising since the two of them pretty much hated everyone, so it stands to reason they'd eventually find plenty to hate in the other.)
There were only three denominations of bills in that first April 5 printing. One was the Jackson/Calhoun bill, one pictured a train (??), and one (below) featured pictures of slaves toiling in the fields. All of their favorite things. (No raindrops on roses, or whiskers on kittens.)
You might well compare Jackson to Trump in many ways. Before Jackson won the presidency, all of America's Presidents had come from the Eastern elite, and were either Founding Fathers or their direct descendants. Jackson was the outsider who broke the mold. He was the President for the simple, common man. He was plain-spoken, blunt and unmannered. He had wild hair. If he had his druthers, he would have built a wall to keep Native Americans west of the Mississippi. He WAS Donald Trump, if Trump were a general rather than a businessman.
Aha, got you in the last sentence of the analogy.
ReplyDeleteJackson may have been an asshole (frankly I'd say psychopath), but he was not a general in the same way Trump was a businessman.
Jackson was actually GOOD at being a general.
Fair point!
ReplyDeleteThe Eastern Elite remark was another reason I despise Jackson as a proud Pennsylvanian. At the time Philadelphia was still the cultural and financial capitol of the country to a large degree. The dominant financial institution at the time was The Bank of the United States, really the nation's bank at the time. Jackson hated Nicholas Biddle, the educated, cultured head of the bank and Biddle equally disliked Jackson as a loud uncouth "common" man. Jackson felt that the bank and Biddle had way too much economic & political control and vowed to destroy the bank. Against the advice of many, Jackson rescinded the bank's charter and it folded shortly thereafter. As forecast the bank's demise hit the young nation's economy hard and Jackson's vendetta against Biddle & the bank brought about one of the first serious financial downturns in the US. (The first Too Big to Fail Bank?) No doubt Trump would be just a big a bull in a whatever china.
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